Every autumn for the past three years the well-intentioned senior boys and girls at Quincy High School in Quincy, Massachusetts have gone around sticking dozens of cheap plastic flamingos in people's yards along with signs asking for $20 donations. They call their activity "flocking." It's a harmless alternative to flash-robbing and other popular teen pastimes.

Old-fashioned "meet me in Union Square and do the Thriller dance"-style flash mobs have…
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The Quincy students flock their neighbors in order to raise money for "Senior Night Out," which WHDH-TV describes as a "safe and drug-free post-prom night event." You'd think that everyone in town would be supportive of such a wholesome party. But you'd be wrong!

"They all believe that this is just a laughing matter and to me this is the farthest thing from a laughing matter," Carol Abbott, "a longtime Quincy resident" who sounds about as fun as a molar extraction administered without anesthesia, tells WHDH. Abbott, says the TV station, "finds it appalling that someone would line her meticulously manicured lawn with a dozen plastic flamingos." Quincy High is encouraging these kids how to trespass and vandalize, she asserts. "To encourage children — and they are children — to come on people's property without permission. In the city of Presidents, I think John Adams is rolling in his grave today over this, that is my issue," she adds.

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NEWS BULLETIN for Carol Abbott: Neither John Adams nor any other president, living or dead, gives a fuck about you and your meticulously manicured lawn. Now have some chamomile tea and settle down.

Quincy High, for its part, does not agree with Carol Abbott that Carol Abbott's lawn is sacred ground, or that the Ghost of John Adams is on Team Carol Abbott, and is continuing its fund-raiser despite her protestations. About the rogue flamingos, Quincy High principal Frank Santoro says that "a simple call would have taken them off the lawn." He obviously doesn't understand how homeowner outrage works.